The Glebe is offering a welcome, if not a noisy one, to Def Leppard and the just-renamed CityFolk festival.

Both will play at the newly renovated Lansdowne Park, it was revealed Tuesday.

Glebe residents have complained in the past about noise from the Central Canada Exhibition, especially concerts at night. This year's Folk Festival at Hog's Back Park also brought noise complaints, some from the Glebe, which is about four kilometres away.

"The idea of concerts taking place at Lansdowne has always been part of the expectation," resident Bob Brocklebank.

"Even when Lansdowne consisted mostly of asphalt, there were concerts there, too," said Brocklebank, who has just finished a term in charge of Lansdowne issues at the Glebe Community Association.

"The problem is to work out a working relationship between the community and the concert organizers so that everybody can get along," he said. That would include concert hours and noise levels.

"We don't expect to be able to hear the hummingbird's wings flapping if you live downtown. You're accustomed to the traffic and noise and air-conditioning units," he said.

The festival – now dubbed CityFolk – will call Lansdowne Park home as organizers make a move to a more central location for music fans.

"The fact that Lansdowne was complete and seeing the new site really inspired us with what we could do there with the festival," said Mark Monahan, the festival's executive and artistic director.

According to Monahan, both parks are similar in size, but Lansdowne offers services Hog's Back Park cannot, which he said will make setting up and operation of the festival much easier.

Lansdowne's great lawn will be the location of the gated main stage for ticket-holders-only.

The area in front of and around the Aberdeen Pavilion will be open to the public and will include craft beer tents and musical programming.

Noise from this past year's festival at Hog's Back prompted a number of complaints from the Glebe neighbourhood, as the sound trickled down the river into their neighbourhood and the festival was ultimately slapped with a $405 fine after its opening night.

To mitigate concerns for 2015, Monahan said he has already met with Capital Coun. David Chernushenko about noise concerns and plans to hold a consultation with the community in the spring.

That was welcome news to Glebe Community Association president Christine McAllister, who added the community does acknowledge events at the park will be coming.

"We will be looking at the noise and making sure that bylaws are followed, but we also know it's just part of living next to the venue," McAllister said.

McAllister said since the park opened, the community has been focused on the day-to-day impacts and as more events occur, the association's Lansdowne Park committee will address community concerns and work with the city and park operator Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group to alleviate them.

"We do plan to take a closer look at the impacts that could happen," she said.

As arts writer Lynn Saxberg reports in Tuesday's Citizen, the newly-named CityFolk will take place at the redeveloped Bank Street park from Sept. 17 to 20, 2015.

The festival has spent the past four years at the bucolic, if a bit muddy, Hog's Back Park, but organizers appear to be after a more accessible site with better electrical and water hook-ups.

Lansdowne's got that, but it's also got neighbours. Lots of them. And if the noise from the festival prompted complaints and charges last year — when the main stage was located several kilometres away — one can only imagine what will happen when the stage is closer.

Saxberg's story says organizers will be mindful of the direction the main stage faces and are thinking about presenting shows earlier in the evening, so the music will be finished by 10 p.m., instead of 11 p.m.

Capital Coun. David Chernushenko spoke out about the complaints he received after the first night of this year's festival, saying at the time that it was the organizer's responsibility to ensure the city's noise bylaws weren't being broken.

Keeping noise under control has nothing to do with stopping people from having fun, Chernushenko said then.

"It's about respect ... I'm just tired of talking to festival organizers and having them argue with me, and tell me I'm wrong, and that my residents are just a bunch of no-fun party poopers, that, really, it wasn't that bad."

Urban-dwellers are going to have to learn to get along with the Cityfolk.

The city's info line was flooded with noise complaints in September -- coming primarily from Glebe residents -- when the 20th anniversary edition of the Ottawa Folk Festival took the stage four kilometres and two neighbourhoods away in Hog's Back Park.

Now, festival boss Mark Monahan is setting up shop right in their back yard, bringing the newly-rebranded Cityfolk Festival to Lansdowne Park for the 2015 edition.

"I think Lansdowne is a great site for outdoor events, and not specifically TD Place, but the entire park, with the Great Lawn, Aberdeen Pavilion, the Horticultural Building, and we've been talking with the city and looking at those spaces," said Monahan.

"And ultimately we've grown the Folk Festival to the point where staging at Hog's Back has become difficult logistically."

Monahan enjoyed some great success after taking the floundering festival under his wing and moving it to Hog's Back for four editions -- the audience and artistic budget expanding exponentially -- but the 2014 festival was marred by a war of words that erupted over a bylaw ticket issued on opening night.

But Monahan said the goal is to work with communities and residents to mitigate issues around the sound bleed.

"It's a site the city wants to promote as a cultural site, and not just sporting events, and I think this is a great anchor event," he said.

Monahan sat down with Capital Coun. David Chernushenko to smooth over any lingering ill feelings and to start ironing out the kinks.

The 2015 edition of the Ottawa Folk Festival will have a slick new name and an urban home to mark the start of its third decade of existence. CityFolk will take place at Lansdowne Park from Sept. 17-20.

The move to the newly revamped Bank Street landmark comes after four years of butting heads with Mother Nature at the lush, green Hog's Back Park site. Though spacious and picturesque, the National Capital Commission park was never designed for large events, noted festival director Mark Monahan in an interview.

"It really is a difficult site to manage when you have any kind of precipitation," Monahan said, recalling the muck that developed at Hog's Back when it rained. "There's no water or power or service roads. Just basic servicing of toilets and vendors is extremely difficult. It is a beautiful location but problematic in many ways for a larger event."

At the Lansdowne Park site, the CityFolk main stage will be located on the Great Lawn, the expanse of green space next to the TD Place football stadium. The festival will also make use of the Aberdeen Pavilion, the Horticulture Building and likely some of the other public spaces, but not the stadium. No big jump in attendance is expected; capacity of the new site is estimated at about 15,000 people.

Of course, moving the festival to the heart of the city may spark a flurry of noise complaints from nearby residents, especially considering the fest was charged this year after complaints during the opening-night concert by Foster the People. To deal with the issue in the new site, organizers say they will be mindful of the direction the main stage faces, and are considering the idea of presenting concerts earlier in the evening so the music is finished by 10 p.m. Monahan said he hopes to further discuss the city's noise bylaw with Capital ward Coun. David Chernushenko in the new year.

Opening of Whole Foods Market, Sporting Life this week begins battle for customers

At times tense and heated, the relationship between small businesses in the Glebe neighbourhood and those settling in at Lansdowne Park will be one of reciprocity, according to retail experts and local businesses.

"All families fight," said Gilbert Russell, vice-chairman of the Glebe Business Improvement Area, "Both parties have realized that we are going to be better if we work together."

Some businesses have already opened at the rebuilt Lansdowne Park.

But this week is important as key entities Whole Foods Market and Sporting Life open for the public this week — Wednesday and Thursday respectively — leading to major competition for smaller Glebe operations like McKeen’s Metro, Kunstadt Sports and others.

Retail expert Darren Fleming believes the businesses will rely on each other to bring shoppers to the area. The smaller Glebe stores have the history and the clientele, while the larger stores have the uniqueness and newness.

Also, Lansdowne is not your typical retail site, said Fleming, a managing principal at Cresa Ottawa.

"There aren’t acres and acres of parking that people can pull up to in front of the store," he said. "Whole Foods has a lot of experience in these types of developments."

'The parking at that site is tricky and it's not easy,' says commercial tenant representative

Commercial office space being built at the new Lansdowne Park isn't attracting much interest so far due to site challenges including parking, says a commercial tenant representative.

Construction work continues at Lansdowne on condominiums, restaurants and offices and two major retailers are opening this week: Whole Foods Market and Sporting Life.

But so far, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, or CIRA, has been the only organization to announce it will be relocating to Lansdowne.

CIRA's corporate headquarters are expected to move in during spring 2015.

Several floors of commercial office space at Lansdowne remain without a tenant.

'It's really challenging,' broker says

The lack of interest mainly comes down to parking, said the man who helped broker the CIRA deal.

"From the office market, it's really challenging. The parking at that site is tricky and it's not easy," said Darren Fleming, a managing principal at Cresa Ottawa, which represents commercial tenants.

"There's probably going to be 10 to 20 days a year where parking is going to be really challenged because people are coming for a game or a concert, and that just doesn't work for a lot of organizations."

Fleming said CIRA chose Lansdowne to "make a statement."

"It's a very visible site, there's a lot of attention and activity around it, so they're choosing to be there in spite of some of the challenges because of where and what it is," Fleming said.

'People want to be in this area,' BIA chair argues

Greg Best — chair of the Glebe Business Improvement Area, which includes Lansdowne — agrees parking is a major issue. But he thinks the new park will still attract commercial tenants to the office tower.

"People want to be in this area," Best said.

"You're close to the canal, everything's within walking distance, you're two minutes to the Queensway... It's a heavily treed area, there's a lot of parks, a lot of bikeways. So you don't get that in downtown Ottawa."

Bernie Ashe, the CEO of the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, said there are no new announcements about office tenants.

Two companies are claiming they haven't been paid for millions of dollars worth of work done on Lansdowne Park.

In a statement of claim filed on Oct. 27, Spring Valley Classic Custom Corp. says it had an agreement to build the wooden veil that surrounds TD Place stadium, as well as additional design and engineering work.

The price for the work was about $8 million, the Hamilton-area company claims, but it did the work and supplied materials worth an additional $3.4 million.

The claim says the Lansdowne group and Pomerleau, the contractor in charge of the project, inspected the additional work and were aware of the additional charges through invoices and requests for payment.

Spring Valley claims the difference hasn't been paid.

The lawsuit names the defendants as Lansdowne Residential GP, Lansdowne Residential Limited Partnership, TD Bank, Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, the City of Ottawa and Pomerleau.